`Heart`: Three-ring Farce With Plenty Of Style

March 30, 1985|By Sid Smith, Entertainment writer.

Since his death in 1940, the reputation of once-suppressed Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov has improved in his own country and skyrocketed here, thanks largely to his madcap fanasty novel, ``The Master and Margarita.``

An earlier novella, the 1925 ``Heart of a Dog,`` doesn`t have the same crazed punch as the later masterpiece, but it has its share of Bulgakov tweaks --a zany humor, an irreverence for human superstructures and, best of all, an ability to anthropomorphize animals into vulgar man-creeps.

In a sometimes hilarious, sometimes forced production, author/actor Frank Galati and director Michael Maggio have teamed up to bring this obscure prosaic delight to Evanston`s Northlight Theatre stage. The slapstick is merciless, the mugging is shameless, but the theatrics are inspired tour de force; in the end, this screwball treatment, a kind of Nikolai Gogol meets the Marx Brothers, does Bulgakov little harm and may win him additional fans.

And it`s very intelligent, entertaining and, in its broad carnival way, well-acted. When the play opens, actor Kevin Dunn, dressed like Old Deuteronomy in ``Cats,`` stands on a bare stage as a talking street mongrel in Moscow. Actually, his discourse is made up of his spoken thoughts, which center around the starving agonies of a stray mutt in winter.

A famous scientist, played by a mincing and unflinchingly hammy Galati, rescues the dog and brings him to his seven-room apartment and laboratory furnished with around-the-clock warmth and table scraps. But the professor and his assistant (Steven Memel) have Frankenstein motives. A renowned experimentalist in rejuvenation, the professor intends to implant the pooch with human organs--namely, testes and a pituitary gland--to see if the aging process can be reversed.

Instead, the dog, whose name is Sharik, becomes a barbaric human, disrupting the professor`s cherished materialistic comforts. Sharik the dog was an overeater; Sharikov the man passes wind at the table, pinches female breasts, strangles kittens and befriends the Bolsheviks downstairs, revolutionary enthusiasts who resent the scientist`s roomy dwelling and plot continually to partition it like their own.

When this production isn`t interesting because of the bizarre story or Bulgakov`s witty putdowns of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie and the scientific establishment, the comic overplaying fills in the gaps. The Act I finale, Sharik`s humanizing operation, is a mini-farce by itself. Galati, Memel and house servants Susan E. Mullen and Barbara E. Robertson do a frenzied imitation of a Saturday matinee ghoul show, holding up blood-dripping canine testicles and performing surgery with an egg beater.

Galati`s dandified sputterings and eyerolls are amusing even when they mistrust the text; Dunn is endearing as a canine and sadly gross as a human, walking clumsily on tiptoe and swilling vodka at dinner like a Brooklyn mug downing beer at the ballpark.

In line with the cartoon-for-grown-ups atmosphere, Linda Buchanan has come up with a comic strip set that echoes Bulgakov`s absurdist slant and provides a major source for a lot of the physical nonsense. A series of flat, black, mechanistic bookshelves zoom on and off stage to create a surreal bourgeois apartment. Some of the scenes are played behind the stage curtain (a white sheet resembling a hospital bed drape) in silhouette, initially a way to convey the largeness of humans in poor Sharik`s eyes, but eventually part of what becomes a well-constructed circus dreamscape.

``HEART OF A DOG``

A drama adapted by Frank Galati from the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, directed by Michael Maggio, lighting by Robert Shook, sets by Linda Buchanan and costumes by Julie Jackson. Opened March 28 at Northlight Theatre, Green Bay Road and McCormick Boulevard, Evanston, and plays at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 5 and 8:45 p.m. Saturday and 3 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, through May 5 (no April 30 performance). Length of performance, x hours. Tickets are $13 to $17. Phone 869-7278.